Keynote Lecture #1
The Invention of the Mediterranean Heritage
Cyril Isnart
Anthropologist at the CNRS and director of the Institut d’Ethnologie Méditerranéenne, Européenne et Comparative, in Aix-en-Provence. His work focuses on the resurgence of marginal musical and religious traditions, such as the Jewish past or music of rural origin, in the context of southern Europe and the Mediterranean.
He was a researcher at the University of Évora, Portugal, where he directed an international research programme on religious minorities and their heritage practices in the Mediterranean, supported by the FCT.
He is currently in scientific residence at the Museum of European and Mediterranean Civilizations in Marseille, where he directs a programme on minority objects.
Cyril Isnart has published more than forty articles in scientific journals such as Ethnologie Française, Etnográfica, International Journal of Heritage Studies or Ethnologia Europeae. He has co-edited collective works on cultural heritage in contemporary societies (Les vocabulaires locaux du “patrimoine”, The Religious Heritage Complex), and a dozen issues of scientific journals on alternative and contesting heritage, soundscapes, the reconstruction of lost countries or the contemporary reconfigurations of traditions.